


It Happened on a Bus

by FootlessData507



Series: Tremendously Stupid Writing Club Prompts [3]
Category: It Happened One Night (1934)
Genre: Gen, Humor, Rashomon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-28
Updated: 2017-10-28
Packaged: 2019-01-25 10:17:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12529084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FootlessData507/pseuds/FootlessData507
Summary: Three different narrators recount the events on the bus.





	It Happened on a Bus

**Author's Note:**

> This is the result of a writing exercise where I had to write the same scene from three different perspectives. I've always enjoyed it, so I thought I would go ahead and post it.

**Bus Driver**

            It was an irritating end to an irritating day. Gus had been driving that bus for hours, zigzagging around the northeastern United States, from Bridgewater, Maine to Bridgewater, Maryland, rolling along in his stuffy bus filled with whiffy travelers. In Bridgewater, New York, he’d managed to pick up a newspaper, but hadn’t even been able to check the racing results before some large woman with a larger hat had demanded he help her with her luggage.

            He’d helped the dame load her cases on a trolley and arrived just in time to see someone dump the newspaper out of the window. The paper fell into a puddle of oil, becoming mushier than a Mary Pickford picture.

            The paper-tosser was some lurch with a smug smirk Gus would love to smack out from under his mustache. Gus marched up to the culprit and gave him a good talking to, but the jerk just stood there burping up retorts, and it soon became clear to Gus he was blotto, John Barrymore blotto.

            Gus’s ma had always told him that there was no use talking to bent wiseguys, so he stalked back to the front of the bus, pausing to quickly back up some high-class doll who was unlucky enough to have to pass the bus ride next to that fried goon.  Poor kid.

**Ellen**

It was the most horrible thing. There I was just minding my own business, just sitting there in that wretched autobus, tired, upset, at my wit’s end, taxed beyond every nerve, when this horrible man accosted me!

            It was really too terrible! One would assume that it was obvious even to someone of the meanest intelligence that my presence on an autobus could only indicate I had suffered truly severe hardship, and instead of the man offering me assistance, which would have been the course taken by someone with the slightest sense of chivalry, the cad started raving that _I_ was sitting in _his_ seat!

            I ask you, how could it be _his_ seat when _my_ things were there? It really was too ridiculous! And then the wretched smelling ape sat down next to me and refused to place my luggage above us like any decent gentleman would have.  So I had to do it, and when I did, the gorilla positively pawed at me.

            The oafish bus driver barely gave me any assistance. In summary, my experience on the Cross Country Autobus Line was far from satisfactory. I would not patronize again. One star.

**Peter**

Every time I ride the bus I’m reminded of how annoying every other goddamn person on this goddamn pile of dirt we call Earth is. Devil take them, each and every one.

            Especially that damn bus driver and that damn woman.

            So I arrive at my seat and find it littered with garbage like a tramp’s been camping there. I toss the trash out the window and then this short-fused bus driver marches up to me like he’s a big man. The jerk is angry at me for tossing the newspaper, when he should be thanking me for playing maid.

            I lay into him pretty smart-like, not that it’s hard to outsmart a goof like him. But still he’s in my face throwing a fuss about his damn papers, bleating “oh yeah” like a parrot raised on nothing but Jimmy Cagney pictures. And finally I have no choice but to yell “oh yeah” back and let me tell you, the crowd ate it, laughing riot at my razz, and I was finally able to return to my seat.

            Only while that dumb palooka had been spitting “oh yeah” at me, some highhat dame snatched my seat! Those bluebloods think they own the world! And when I tell her to scram or move aside so I can rest my rear, she acts real offended-like, as if she hadn’t just stolen my seat!

            Finally I have to squeeze next to her, and I’m surprised the jane managed to read a bus schedule with her nose way high up in the air like that. I bought my ticket, same as her! What does she expect me to do, strap myself to the front of the bus and catch flies in my kisser all the way to Bridgewater?

            Some people.


End file.
